The Power Tool Drag Races 2004 were held in San Francisco
atAce Auto Dismantlers
on June 12-13th. What a wild and crazy event this was.

Boy I'll tell ya what, I've done a lot of stuff, from
Tractor pulling to Flying Airplanes, Robotic Combat and even went to the
Burning
man in 2001. Recently Team K.I.S.S and Team S.L.A.M found a whole new
way of having fun with technology and lots of interesting folks.

Knowing that many of the toys that people tend to create
for technical competition, can and will kill you! We were comforted by
the posting of this sign acknowledging the fact that we would be working
with trained and qualified personnel. (Ya Right)

The safety staff was always present to keep folks out
of trouble and a high degree of professionalism was shown by their leader.
Shown resting here ready to spring into action action at a moments notice.

The man in black is Charlie
Gadekena well known, respected
and infamous artist and the event organizer.

It's a beautiful thing to see folks working together clearing
out the old wreckage in the spirit of fellowship, sportsmanship and the
desire to make room for the industrial powered machine races and the fires
and Semi controlled explosions to follow.

Sniff!! Makes ya sorta misty. Don't it ?

The Race track is 75 feet long built from chip board and
2 x 4's standing on their edge to guide the racers down the 12 inch wide
track surface.

The track conditions tend to change a bit during a race
day, from the wear of circular saw blade cuts, chain saw gouges, periodic
scorching from flame throwers and burning liquids leaked on it both intentionally
and unintentionally.

Power for the electric power tools is provided by a large
generator and power cords laid down alongside the racetrack and doubled
back to the starting line.

Folks come from all over the know Solar system to lend
a hand in clearing the track and viewing areas of obstructions.

After Saturdays racing and excess nominal track wear.
The entire surface was replaced on both tracks using a state of the art
wood shaping machine.

The diligent repair crew labored long and hard to replace
the 150 feet of track surface. It really doe's take a lot of work to put
on an event like this.

Always on hand, Seasoned and professional announcers are
seen diligently studying their notes and builder Bio sheets. All in preparation
for the 9 hours of almost constant talking, Cat calls, Put downs and other
landslides of B.S. that the audience and the competitors would have
to endure.

These guys were cool...

The video production crew had several announcements they
needed to record and the fine folks on the announcing stand pulled it off
with perfect three part disharmony.Featured announcers included John Hell, Chicken
John and Hal
Robins (aka the Reverend Dr. Howling Owll)

Charlie listens intently to the multitude of sound takes
required for a video production.

Charlie is totally impressed and amazed by the fact that
the sound bytes are finally completed.

The sound system was housed in this dark and mysterious
room....

The Massive and Ultra Stealth, Semi
Secrete, Non-Nuclear powered, fire control system provided the Mega
120 VAC to feed the mighty racers their fill of Free Range Electrons.

Jim Mason
also a respected and infamous artist was also the Co-event organizer and
a strong competitor as well.

I had the honor of racing against his machine in the first
race on Sunday in the modified class. This is were I learned a new
concept of time. It's called a Mason moment. To some of us on (Earth
time) that's about 30 minutes of waiting for Jim to get his stuff together.

Personally I think he was trying to psych me and the rest
of the planet out. That's probably a good strategy.

Jim ponders his next move of the day, which should occur
any time now........ Or at least sometime in the near future...........

Actually he's pretty amazing, it appeared that he built
his machines as needed before every race.